Independent Lens
One With the Whale
Hunting whales is a matter of life or death for the residents of St. Lawrence.
The Parking Lot Movie
One small parking lot exists in a college town, and the asphalt philosophers who work as attendants there have a story to tell.
- Series
- Independent Lens
- Premiere Date
- October 19, 2010
- Length
- 70 minutes
Director
Meghan Eckman
The Parking Lot Movie is Meghan Eckman's directorial debut. Eckman graduated from the University of Virginia in 2000 with a degree in English Language and Literature. In 2001, she moved to New York. There, Meghan made several short documentaries and worked as a professional video editor in Manhattan. In 2005, the short film she produced and co-edited… Show more
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The Film
"It's not just a parking lot, it's a battle with humanity."The Parking Lot Movie is a documentary about a singular parking lot in Charlottesville, Virginia and its select group of attendants that inhabit its microcosm. The employees are a uniquely varied group comprised of undergraduate and graduate students, philosophers, intellectuals, musicians, artists, and marginal-type characters.
Three years in the making, this documentary is a strange rite of passage for all involved. Themes receiving daily scrutiny and detailing include cars and license plates, capitalism, anger, justice, drunkenness, spiritual awareness, class struggle, entitlement, and working in the service sector. For these toll-booth toilers, the intersection between the status quo and the quest for freedom becomes the challenge. Something as simple as a parking lot becomes an emotional way station for The American Dream. As one attendant put it, "We had it all in a world that had nothing to offer us."
